Freedom Force vs. the 3rd Reich

I am a huge comic book fan since I was a kid. I know my Jack Kirby, Stan Lee and my Bob Kane. With that being said, Freedom Force is what any Marvel game should be. It has great sense of humor, lots of well used cliches, fast action, a well written plot and awesome character development. Even if you aren't big into comic books, this is a very fun game to play. I played it a while ago but lost the game, so I am totally buying this one.

Really campy old-school "silver age" style adventure. There's a free demo out there, just Google for it. One of the best purchases I ever made. Although challenging, the interface is easy on the nerves. Pause the game, click each hero, and a menu of choices drops down. Select what skill or attack to use, select the target, unpause the game, and the commands are executed. A dream of a game.

More fun in the vein of the original Freedom Force. FFvTR is significantly shorter than the original FF. The campaign also feels more like a series of short campaigns than a single coherent campaign - though this improves towards the end when things hit high gear. Conversely, one story thread involving Bullet petered out with seemingly nothing to show for it. I don't find the new characters particularly interesting, though I have a fondness for Tombstone and his Possession ability. I miss the ability to "underpower" an attack. It sometimes allowed for more surgical tactical options. Conversely, while FFvTR takes away, it fails to really add anything much. There are a couple of new powers but basically it's just more of the same (which I hasten to add is not a bad thing!). One area where FFvTR actually improves over FF is it maintains a feeling of challenge throughout. In the first mission you have to defeat a 50ft-tall version of the villain Nuclear Winter whilst dodging falling bombs. Then things get worse. And worse. Some levels of the original FF felt like a bit of a cakewalk in comparison. In FFvTR there's scarcely a level that's not ramping it up a notch. As others have pointed out, both FF games are best enjoyed with the (reasonably-balanced) characters provided. It's ludicrously easy to make heroes using the character creator who are so effective as to make the game boring. So, in summary: Less than it could've been but still a fun followup to the original Freedom Force. P.S. If you have the original Freedom Force and you're looking for more FF action, the free fan-mod "The Strangers" is superb: An interesting and coherent campaign (not set in the FF universe but maintaining a comic book sensibility), a variety of new powers and diverse and fascinating characters (starting with a devil whose teenage rebellion consists of becoming a hero). In some ways it's a worthier successor to FF than FFvTR is.

I didn't find the 3rd Reich as interesting as the original Freedom Force if only because it lost some of the comic book charm that was bursting all over the place in the first one... but ti's still a stellar tactical RPG